Oregon
Oregon is a land of many names. The state has been referred to as "California's Canada"; others may call it Washington's Mexico. Most importantly, Stephen Colbert has always called it Idaho's Portugal (some America-haters will claim that Stephen has not, in fact, always held this viewpoint; these people are either liberal hippies too high to have accurate memories and/or liberal computer geeks with advanced alien technology that they've used to edit previous episodes of The Colbert Report to make Stephen look like a liar). It has also been referred to as Nevada's Alaska, Maine's Hawaii, the Pacific Ocean's nipple, and once as Shannon Smith, but in Oregon's defence it was drunk at the time at a swinger's party. Geography Oregon's geography is the result of powerful opposing tectonic forces, known as the Oregon Vortex. Mighty liberal media bias from the south is carried along the SiXaYou range and terminates in that foulest of cankerous springs, Ashland. Witness the Shakespeare Festival and the poisonous Lithia Springs which testify to the demonic liberal powers at play. From the east, an influx of angry Idahoans contantly stirs things up. See, they all took night classes to learn portugese, but when they got to Oregon they find we mostly speak spanish here, and they got pissed. Idahoans can be recognized by their potato-shaped shaven heads, red suspenders, and rolled-up acid washed jeans. To the north is the bizarre state of Washington, where you have to pump your own gas and pay sales tax. History The Ooligong territory, named after a particularly greasy kind of fish, was the hip and happenin' hangout for prehistoric hunter-gatherers. These kindly critters, also known as the Oompa-Loompas (or Ewoks for short), lived in blissful harmony with the giant tortoises and elk spirits of the pre-anime age. Then everything changed when a house fell out of the sky and landed on the Wicked Witch. A conch shell, a painted stick, a spoon and a sock emerged from the destroyed home and went on a magical journey down the Yellow Brick Road, which became known as the Ooligong Trail, and later was shortened to be called the Oregon Trail. Thus, the Lollypop League was powerless to resist the blowing of the conch, at which time Mel Gibson brought Arabian horses from Akmet Hafez. Thus the mighty empire of Oregon was never established. Oregon's Anthem (An excerpt) Onward and upward forever, Forward and on and on, Hail to thee Land of empire-builders My Oregon!!! Not your Oregon!!! My Oregon!!! All mine!!! AH Hah Hah!!! Native population Known for their colorful dress and habitual hemp habits, the natives of Oregon are a curious folk. Although the natives populate many average-size cities, they take regular trips to wooded areas to pray to their pagan idols such as Ralph Nader and Al Gore. During such rituals, the natives converse in nonsensical gabber about government conspiracies and how everyone should be vegetarians. After the marijuana has exhausted their mental capacities, the natives sit in a circle and pound rhythmically on primitive drums to simulate the sounds they would have heard if they went to Vietnam. Their strange dialect of Portuguese makes anthropological studies difficult. So far, linguists only have a tenuous grasp on the language. For example, the term "faded" seems to refer to their feelings of inconsequential existence in a state most Americans can't locate on a map. If encountered in the woods, it is advised to keep a good distance back from the natives. If you have the means, shoot each one with a tranquilizer dart, put them in a suit and tie and drive them to an employment office. This will improve the breed significantly. Native Dialect It is well known, that just as Eskimos have 95,000 different words for "snow", and Californians have 450,000 different terms for "plastic surgery", Oregonians likewise have certain linguistic niches in which they excel in redundancy, including over 12,000,000 for rain only a fraction of which are mentioned below. Words that mean high or stoned: wasted, robo, liberal, student, awake, asleep, alive, dank Words for precipitation: drizzle, tears of Gaia, spizzle, shizzle, atmoshpere, acid sprinklins, dank, liquid sunshine, beaver squirts chuck pee, bear blood, ganja dew, mountain dew, diet mountain dew, mexico mountain dew, canada mountain dew, portugese dew the dew, Words for mold and mildew: Oregon grape, Birkenstock rot, Guatemalan hemp polka-dots, my little hallucinogenic friend in the shower curtain, dank Words without clear meaning: employment, sobriety, sophistication, dank Words to describe Californians here, queer, totally un-dank Residents of Oregon usually mis-pronounce the name of their state as ORE-uh-gun. People who have never been there use the proper pronunciation, or-ee-GONE. Native Dress Oregonians have several forms of native garb peculiar to their culture, and these have been combined in some degree with imported dress customs from -where else?- where everything else dreadful comes from, namely California. Clothing is a clear indicator of status and position in the Ooligong Land - for though Ooligongers lack any awareness of formal (i.e. hoity-toity) culture, higher status individuals passionately cling to percieved class symbols. Low-status (unseelie) costume often includes patches or shingles of bark, woven together with strands of hemp rope and ornamented with moss or live forest creatures. beetles make fine brooches to pin your cloak of moldy straw, for instance. These low-status individuals live in the forest or under bridges, emerging only to get facial tattoos and genital piercings, or to pick up food stamps. In true paradoxical fashion, these "untouchables" also form the highest cadre of the anti-status ladder, known as the unseelie court. The last twelve oregon wars have been fought over which way to hang the poster depicting the seelie/unseelie relations. So far, the seelie side is still at the top, which the unseelies claim is what they wanted all along. So why do they keep firebombing SUVs in Eugene? Well, that's just what they do. Middle-status individuals of moderate status form a patchwork of styles and customs making them difficult to characterize. It has something to do with hoochie-mama fashions from California, inspired by people who think they live in Miami, and Polynesian kids in white velour track suits who didn't quite get the memo that the suburbs are not the ghetto (which rhymes, incidentally). This is countered in some degree by Northern Californians who unspire (the opposite of "aspire") to join the unseelie court, donning clothes of Guatemalan hemp and mass-produced Che Guevara T-shirts in an act of unwitting irony), and by Ooligong natives who adopt various forms of dress (gothic, academic, cosplay/perverse, Martha Stewart) to indicate their aspiration to get the hell out of here. Most Oregonians wish them all the success in the world with that. High-status (seelie) Ooligongers strive to blend their native culture with forms of dress and discourse they saw on TV, with virtually no success. Go to an opera or a symphony in Portland, and you will see gentlemen wearing ties with gold pins under Gore-Tex raincoats, slacks with gardening clogs, jeans with muddy wingtip shoes, dress shirts untucked over belts from nordstrom, linen suits that appear to have been pissed on, gold-rimmed glasses with plastic shades clipped on, and horrible-smelling leather fedoras. Ladies' garb is virtually identical, though likely 10-20 times more expensive, and punctuated by subtle touches of unseelie paisley. This is because ladies make ceramic salmon and take Japanese flower-arranging classes taught by a bourgoise/unseelie instructor, whom they passionately and not-very-secretly desire. The paisley sash, therefore, is intended to make Skeetskeet (for that is his name) leave his skateboard, cover up his tatoos, buy a tie at Nordstrom, and join the seelie masquerade. If Skeetskeet has any brains left after smoking you-know-what, he will instead skate away at top speed, but the issue is still very much undecided. Factoids *All the field mice are high. *The only advantage to their entire population consisting of tree huggers is that they are the nations largest producer of Christmas trees. Thus making it possible for everyone to celebrate the birth of The Baby Jesus. External Sources *Wikipedia's high entry on Oregon *Wikipedia's photos of Idaho potatoes (cover your monitor with plastic if viewing with an Irish "person") *Jimmy Wales donation funded vacation in Portugal *Charitable Organizations in